Crypts and Things for Zothique

I’m somewhat embarrassed that, in my recent post about the current Zothique kickstarter, that I failed to mention the excellent “Old School” swords-and-sorcery roleplaying game, Crypts and Things. Not only is C&T a great game, but it’s also one to which I contributed (albeit indirectly), as the author, Newt Newport, drew upon a number of my swords-and-sorcery house rules for Swords and Wizardry. 

[The Sorcerer from the C&T book]

Crypts and Things aims to emulate the works of authors like Clark Ashton Smith – as well as, of course, Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, Fritz Leiber, and the like. Indeed, CAS’s stories were a significant inspiration for my original house rules. So, it should be easy to run adventures set in Zothique using C&T.

(I have to confess that I remain a little vexed that Newt misspelt my nom de plume “Araskia” in the revised version of C&T ... but I’m trying my best not to be too petty these days.)

Zothique kickstarter

I’ve long been a great fan of Clark Ashton Smith’s fiction, especially his fantasy stories set in Hyperborea, Averoigne, and Zothique. Indeed, on balance I would rank his work to be at least as innovative and compelling as that of his “pulp” peers, H. P. Lovecraft and R. E. Howard. Unfortunately, despite his influence on a few later authors – most notably, Jack Vance – CAS’s writings are not especially well-known.

So I naturally was intrigued when I learned about a kickstarter to produce an illustrated omnibus of CAS’s Zothique stories, as well as role-playing adaptations of the setting. The latter consist of: The Zothique RPG Campaign Guide (the gazetteer and rules for the setting), The Denizens of the Dying Sun (essentially a “monster manual” for Zothique), and Litanies of the Dead: A Trilogy of Doomed Adventures (three adventures).  

Unfortunately, the role-playing systems in question are 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and Shadowdark. I’m not really interested in any of these systems. The possible exception is Shadowdark, which I think is fine but nothing special. (I’m a little puzzled by its current popularity, to be honest. I have nothing against it, but for this kind of “rules-lite-ish, deadly, low magic” game, I regard Dragonbane to be a superior alternative. Nonetheless, unlike 5e D&D, I would be happy to try out Shadowdark some time. But enough of this tangent…)

I plan to get the omnibus. CAS’s short stories are available for free online (at Eldritch Dark). But it would be nice to have them all collected into a sturdy, attractive physical tome. I’m going to skip the RPG adaptations, but perhaps others might find them of interest. 

[Map by G. R. Hager. From Eldritch Dark.]

Fictional worlds and the RPGs that I would use for them

Below I list some of my favourite settings from fantasy fiction that I think could serve as viable RPG settings and the rules that I would use if I were to run adventures in them. 

Fictional setting: Middle-earth (as described by JRR Tolkien in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and so forth).

 

System: Adventures in Middle-Earth (a 5^th edition D&D variant, heavily revised with ideas from The One Ring RPG) for the Third Age (I had a very positive experience using the system).

Possible alternative: Against the Darkmaster (VsD)—for earlier eras or if I'm drawing a lot on my old Middle-earth Roleplaying (MERP) collection, since it’s easy to convert MERP stats into VsD.

(Why not MERP? In my view, VsD keeps everything that is great about MERP and makes some helpful improvements.)

 

A further thought on Middle-earth: I'd like to try The One Ring (2^nd edition) system sometime—I have the book and box set, and they’re gorgeous. I played a couple of games of 1^st edition TOR years ago and didn’t care for it—something about it just didn’t “click” for me. But that may have been because I didn't really understand the system (or I was just too tired or something). AiME imports a lot of ideas from TOR, so there must be something there.

Fictional setting: The Elder Isles of Jack Vance’s Lyonesse trilogy.

 

System: The Lyonesse RPG (a version of Mythras).

One of my favourite FRPGs (Mythras) adapted specifically for one of my favourite fantasy settings—what more could I ask for?

(I think that this system also could be used for a “Cugel-level” Dying Earth campaign.)

 

Fictional setting: The Eternal Champion multiverse, including especially the worlds described in Michael Moorcock’s Elric (the “Young Kingdoms”) and Corum stories.

System: Mythras, especially with the (now out-of-print) RuneQuest II (MRQII) Elric supplements. Since Mythras is a direct descendant of MRQII, conversion would be a non-issue. (I played in an excellent Young Kingdoms campaign using MRQII a decade ago.)

 

Fictional settings: The Hyborian Age (as described in Robert E Howard’s Conan stories) and the Atlantean Age (as described in REH’s Kull tales).

 

System: Crypts and Things if I want something fast and furious; Mythras for detailed bone-crunching action.

 

Fictional settings: Clark Ashton Smith’s “Averoigne,” “Hyperborea,” and “Zothique.”

 

Systems: Again, either Crypts and Things or Mythras, depending on what style of game I want to run.

 

Fictional setting: The “First Law” world, as described in Joe Abercrombie’s original trilogy, and the post-trilogy stand-alone books (I think that the regions covered in Red Country and Best Served Cold would make excellent campaign settings). (Note: I haven’t read the “Age of Madness” trilogy yet.)

System: Either Mythras or Against the Darkmaster.  

 

Fictional setting: The “Cthulhu Mythos” universe (as described by HP Lovecraft and others).

 

System: Call of Cthulhu (naturally)—or possibly a modified version of Mythras (I'm playing in an excellent Mythras “Return to the Mountains of Madness” campaign now).

 

 

Crypts and Things versus Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea

Both Crypts and Things and Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea are products of the 'Old School Renaissance.'  Both games present ‘swords and sorcery’ variants of different versions of ‘old school’ Dungeons & Dragons: 0e D&D (as reworked into Swords and Wizardry) in the case of C&T, and 1e AD&D in the case of AS&SH.  And both games draw upon the same literary sources: the ‘weird fantasy’ writings of Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, and the like.

I quite like AS&SH, especially the art and setting, and I highly recommend that people check it out.  But I’m partial to C&T.  This should not be surprising, I guess, given that I contributed some ideas to it.  (The industrious Newt Newport, author of C&T, drew upon a number of my house-rules for Swords & Wizardry when writing the game.)  I’m looking forward to the new, expanded version of C&T, which should be coming out in 2016.

Anyhow, the reason why I mention these two fine games now is that there is an interesting conversation concerning them over at the RPGsite.  I encourage all fans of classic swords and sorcery fiction to check them out!

Known World (Mystara) Pre-History

Apparently the classic Dungeons & Dragons "Known World" setting -- later "Mystara" -- originated as a home-brew campaign world created by Lawrence Schick and Tom Moldvay in 1974-76.  Unsurprisingly (to anyone familiar with the D&D module X2), Clark Ashton Smith was a major inspiration.

Schick has the details in this post at the Black Gate.

Two Vancian Thoughts

Following Jack Vance’s recent death, I decided to re-read the Cugel novels, The Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel’s Saga.  (Both books I had read over two decades ago, but only minimally remembered.)  I also finally read the original Dying Earth collection of stories.  I’ve read Vance’s Lyonesse trilogy twice previously – in fact, it’s one of my favourite fantasy series of all time – but strangely had largely neglected his Dying Earth writings until now.

After reading these tales of the Dying Earth, and enjoying them enormously, I had two thoughts that I decided to share here.

First, the influence of Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique on Vance is manifest.  This especially is the case with the Dying Earth collection, which strikes me as almost an homage to CAS.  Like those chronicled by CAS, Vance’s protagonists are often hapless and arrogant, but occasionally sympathetic.  Both CAS and Vance enjoy skewering religious and political authorities, especially by showing the hypocrisy and vanity of such individuals.  And of course, both authors vividly depict a temporally distant earth that is simultaneously familiar and exotic, mundane and magical.

Second, it is hard to overstate the influence that Vance had on Gary Gygax and his version of Dungeons and Dragons and, even more so, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.  There are, of course, the obvious influences – most notably, the entire D&D spell-casting (‘Vancian’ or ‘fire-and-forget’) system, but also magic items like ‘ioun stons’ (which Gygax used with permission from Vance), and the horrible lich ‘Vecna’, whose left hand and eye are described as artifacts on page 124 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide.  

These influences are well known, and hardly worth mentioning.  But what struck me upon reading these books is the extent to which the magic-user class clearly is modelled almost directly on Vance’s magicians, such as Turjan, Mazirian, and Iucounu.  Many AD&D classes have direct literary influences.  The ranger class clearly is based upon Tolkien’s Aragorn, and the monk class purportedly is based upon the character of Kwai Chang Caine (from the 1970s television show ‘Kung Fu’).  I had always assumed that magic-users as a class were somewhat generic, meant to accommodate characters as diverse as Merlin and Thoth-Amon.  But I now think that Vance’s magicians are the direct source of the D&D and AD&D magic-user class.  This seems obvious to me now, but it only occurred to me upon reading these books over the past few weeks.  (Similarly, I think that the ability of thieves to use scrolls – with a chance of such attempts going horribly wrong – was inspired, at least in part, by the character Cugel.)

Anyhow, I highly recommend Vance’s Dying Earth stories to anyone who enjoys fantasy literature with a sharp sardonic bite.  I very much look forward to reading Rhialto the Marvellous in the near future.

Cthulhu meets Conan?

News here on a forthcoming setting entitled 'Primeval Thule', which purports to be a world in which 'Conan meets Cthulhu'.  (Of course, the Cthulhu Mythos always were part of the original Conan stories!  But whatever...)

As fellow fans of the fiction of Robert E. Howard no doubt know already, 'Thule' is one of the nations of the 'Thurian Age', the era of REH's 'Kull' stories (set thousands of years before the 'Hyborian Age' of Conan).

The setting purports to be compatible with Call of Cthulhu, which is why it caught my eye.  But given how radically different CoC is from Pathfinder and 4th edition D&D, I have no idea how one could create a setting that would work equally well for each of these systems.

Nonetheless, since Richard Baker claims, "Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborea stories were perhaps the most direct inspiration for Primeval Thule", I am curious to check out the final product.

Addendum: I can't believe that I forgot to mention that, should this setting prove to be worth using, Crypts and Things would be an ideal (OSR) game to use with it.

Essay on Lovecraft

My fellow Lovecraft fans, I think that this piece in the Los Angeles Review of Books may be of interest to you!  It is a fine essay on Lovecraft's work (posing as a book review).

As an aside, I thought that I would note that I agree with the author that "Clark Ashton Smith was a better stylist" than HPL.  It is regrettable that more of CAS's work is not available in published form today.  Fortunately, most of his work is available online at 'The Eldritch Dark'.

Dead But Dreaming

I recently obtained the legendary anthology of Mythos-inspired tales, Dead But Dreaming, edited by Kevin Ross and Keith Herber (two names that should be familiar to any fan of the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game).

Originally produced in 2002 by Dark Tales Publications, only 75 copies were printed before Dark Tales closed down.  Thankfully, Miskatonic River Press republished the anthology (with some corrections and a new afterword) in 2008.

I cannot praise this collection highly enough, and strongly recommend it to any fan of Lovecraft’s (and Clark Ashton Smith’s) work.  Indeed, I enjoyed Dead But Dreaming so much that I just started reading Dead But Dreaming 2.

Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea now available

As OSR Con II was winding down last month, the artist Ian Baggley introduced himself to me and said a few nice things about this blog, which I quite appreciated.

I think very highly of Ian’s art, and have posted some examples of it a few of times before.  This picture of an Elder Thing strikes me as especially superb, worthy of its eldritch subject matter:

(I would be delighted if some pictures like the one above by Ian were to make it into the forthcoming 7th edition of Call of Cthulhu.  He has a real talent for portraying the weirdness of H. P. Lovecraft’s and Clark Ashton Smith’s weird creations.)

Anyhow, my brief encounter with Ian reminded me that Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea is now available.  I must confess that I lost track of what was happening with Jeffrey Talanian’s intriguing game about a year ago.  But it finally has appeared, and, following a quick skim of the PDF, it looks superb.

Since I already have (and contributed to) Crypts and Things, which covers the same genre but is much lighter on the rules, I doubt that I’ll ever actually run the ASSH system (but hey, I’ve been known to change my mind!).   Nonetheless, there are many things I can envision borrowing for future games.

What most impresses me, based on my quick skim, things I’ve read before (including the ASSH adventure ‘The Charnel Crypt of the Sightless Serpent’), is the setting.  While the setting is not Smith’s ‘Hyperborea’, it clearly is inspired by Smith’s work (in fact, it reminds me more of Zothique than Hyperboria), as well as that of other legendary pulp authors, such as Lovecraft and Robert Howard.  It’s a great setting, and would fit in quite nicely in, say, the cosmology of Michael Moorcock’s ‘Million Spheres’, or perhaps a hitherto unknown part of Lovecraft’s ‘Dreamlands’.

One gripe that I have, though, is the map, which is certain to eat up way too much ink if printed.  I wish that an ‘ink friendly’ version had been included.

If you are interested in checking out Talanian’s version of Hyperborea, it is available qua PDF for a very reasonable price (10 USD) at RPG Now.  The box set also is available for 50 USD.

Sorcerer Klarkash-Ton

Over the past several months, I have had the pleasure of reading through a considerable number of the tales penned by the formidable Clark Ashton Smith. I started with the collection The Return of the Sorcerer, and subsequently moved on to The Tsathoggua Cycle (from Chaosium). After that, I simply printed up and read numerous stories from the wonderful 'Eldritch Dark' website.

I think that I've now read through all, or at least most, of Smith's Zothique, Hyperborea, Poseidonis, and Averoigne stories, as well as many others.

I have enjoyed thoroughly my exploration of Smith’s writings. He is an evocative and witty storyteller, clearly is the peer of his better-known contemporaries and fellow ‘pulp’ and ‘weird fiction’ authors, H. P. Lovecraft and R. E. Howard. Indeed, in many respects, I think that Smith is their superior. His stories possess a dark humour and whimsy that those of his contemporaries generally lack, or do not manifest in equal measure.

If you enjoy the tales of Howard and/or Lovecraft – or, perhaps more so, the fantasy fiction of Jack Vance – I strongly recommend that you check out the work of Clark Ashton Smith. ‘The Tale of Satampra Zeiros’ is probably as good a place as any to start one’s exploration.

(And thanks to Grognardia for keeping the eldritch flame of Klarkash-Ton so effulgent.)

Zothique

The beginning of Clark Ashton Smith’s short story, The Dark Eidolon:

On Zothique, the last continent on Earth, the sun no longer shone with the whiteness of its prime, but was dim and tarnished as if with a vapor of blood. New stars without number had declared themselves in the heavens, and the shadows of the infinite had fallen closer. And out of the shadows, the older gods had returned to man: the gods forgotten since Hyperborea, since Mu and Poseidonis, bearing other names but the same attributes. And the elder demons had also returned, battening on the fumes of evil sacrifice, and fostering again the primordial sorceries.

Many were the necromancers and magicians of Zothique, and the infamy and marvel of their doings were legended everywhere in the latter days. But among them all there was none greater than Namirrha, who imposed his black yoke on the cities of Xylac, and later, in a proud delirium, deemed himself the veritable peer of Thasaidon, lord of Evil.

Those two paragraphs alone make me want to run a campaign set in ‘Zothique’!

(The entire story is available on line here.)